Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator

BURLINGTON, Wash.--In this rural farming community, a high school biology teacher
named Roger DeHart set out to question Darwin's theories of evolution. He never
mentioned God.

He dissected such scientific topics as bacterial flagella, fossil records
and embryonic development. Examine the evidence, he told the students, and
ponder the Big Question: Is life the result of random, meaningless events?

Or was it designed by an intelligent force?

Over nine years, DeHart would introduce ideas about this theory of "intelligent
design." Then a student protested that DeHart was pushing religion. Then the
ACLU filed a complaint. In 1999, school authorities ordered DeHart to drop
references to design and stick to the textbook.

Last week, DeHart was told he could not even introduce materials questioning
Darwin's theories. Now DeHart is being portrayed as a martyr in the movement
promoting intelligent design, the newest twist in the timeless debate over
the origin of life.

The idea that an intelligent force guided creation is as old as Plato. But
it is sparking modern battles as a new breed of mostly Christian scholars
redefines the old evolution-versus-creationism debate and fashions a movement
with more intellectual firepower, mainstream appeal and academic respectability.

The scientific establishment generally rejects the theory. But design advocates
aim to reshape modern intellectual culture by marshaling scientific evidence
that life was created by a transcendent mind, rather than by impersonal, random
natural forces.

"Our work will alert people to the possibility that God is real rather than
a projection of the mind," declared Phillip Johnson, a UC Berkeley professor
emeritus of law whose 1991 book, Darwin on Trial, laid the foundation
for the emerging movement.

Arguments about the theory's use have arisen in public schools from Washington
to Minnesota. On Saturday intelligent-design theorists made their first appearance
at the National School Board Assn. convention in San Diego to explain to school
system attorneys why their ideas should be allowed in classrooms.

Unlike biblical literalists who believe God created the world in six days,
most theorists of intelligent design are reputable university scholars who
accept evolution to a point. But they question whether Darwinist mechanisms
of random mutation and natural selection can fully account for life's astonishing
complexity.

Instead, using arguments ranging from biochemistry to probability theory,
they posit that some sort of intelligence prompted the unfolding of life--say,
by producing the information code in the DNA.

Some proponents are doing theoretical work: seeking systematic ways to detect
intelligence in life, for instance, or evidence to argue that intelligent
design is a better explanation than Darwinism for such events as the abrupt
appearance of advanced organisms during the "Cambrian explosion" 500 million
years ago. Others are more experimental, analyzing DNA thought to be useless
junk for actual functions as a way to show that an intelligent agent designed
it that way for a purpose.

The scientific applications of the work are less important than their cultural
ramifications, Johnson says. Huston Smith, renowned religion scholar and intelligent-design
supporter, argues in a recent book, "Why Religion Matters," that "narrow scientism"
has suffocated the human spirit and debased the culture.

One 1999 national survey by Scientific American magazine showed that
fewer than 10% of National Academy of Sciences members believe in God. By
contrast, 90% of Americans not only believe in God but say God played at least
some role in creation, according to the Gallup Organization.

"We are taking an intuition most people have and making it a scientific
and academic enterprise," Johnson said. In challenging Darwinism with a God-friendly
alternative theory, the professor, who is a Presbyterian, added, "We are removing
the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator."

Most design scientists are more circumspect about identifying the designer
as God. But the work's clear religious implications have propelled the issue
beyond science into passionate arguments about the separation between church
and state, academic freedom and societal values. Is intelligent design research
"stealth creationism" funded by evangelical Christians? Is it legitimate science
that students should be able to debate? Will it renew the culture by reawakening
the human spirit from decades of materialism?

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education
in Oakland, said most scientists do not accept intelligent design as valid
science.

For example, Ken Miller, a Catholic biochemist at Brown University and a
leading critic of intelligent design, argues that design advocates are simply
wrong on the science.

In one oft-cited case, Miller took on leading design theorist Michael Behe,
a Catholic biochemist at Lehigh University. Behe has won fame in the movement
by fashioning a theory called irreducible complexity. He argues that some
complex organisms--the whip-like tails that propel bacteria, for instance--cannot
be simplified or they will lose their ability to function. To Behe, that raises
questions of how they supposedly evolved from simpler forms in the first place.

Miller, however, took a mousetrap Behe said could not be simplified, dismantled
it, reduced its parts and got it to work. Behe responded that Miller proved
his point only by using intelligence to re-engineer it. Miller and others
charge that advocates of intelligent design duck their peers--failing, for
instance, to publish their arguments in major scientific journals--because
their enterprise is religious, not scientific. "They are using political and
social tools to gain acceptance in the classroom that they are unable or unwilling
to win in the scientific community," Miller said.

But design advocates claim they have been deliberately snubbed by the scientific
establishment. In one celebrated case, professor Dean Kenyon of San Francisco
State University was removed from teaching biology by his department chairman
in 1992 after criticizing Darwin's theories, but was reinstated by a vote
of the Academic Senate.

Other scientists report receiving correspondence from colleagues who confess
doubts about Darwin's theories but are afraid to go public for fear of career
setbacks.

"There's a sense in the scientific and academic community that this stuff
needs to be shut down--that 'ID' is evil and if it succeeds it will overturn
science," said William Dembski, a mathematician at Baylor University in Texas.
Dembski was stripped of his directorship of a new campus institute on intelligent
design after holding a controversial conference on the issue.

The university says Dembski was removed because of uncollegial behavior,
not the content of his work; Dembski continues his design research at Baylor
as an associate research professor.

To push intelligent design into the public square, Johnson, the movement's
strategic mastermind, has fashioned a two-pronged "wedge strategy." The first
step is to open academic debate by pressing scientists to explain whether
evolutionary claims are based on "impartially evaluated evidence or philosophical
dogma."

The second tactic is to unify the religious world--Christians, Jews, Muslims
and others who believe in a creator--to produce a constituency that would
insist that intelligent design be considered an option for debate. To support
those efforts, advocates of intelligent design have acquired significant research
funding. In 1996, the Discovery Institute in Seattle launched a science and
culture program that is emerging as the intelligent-design movement's national
think tank.

Primarily funded by evangelical Christians--particularly the wealthy Ahmanson
family of Irvine--the institute's $1-million annual program has produced 25
books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for doctoral
and postdoctoral research. Fieldstead & Co., which is owned by Howard
and Roberta Ahmanson, has pledged $2.8 million through 2003 to support the
intelligent-design program.

One Discovery funder, Tom McCallie of the Maclellan Foundation in Chattanooga,
Tenn., said the foundation awarded $350,000 to the institute in the hopes
that researchers would prove that "evolution was not the process by which
we were created." He said Darwinism has promoted a materialistic world view
that he blames for destroying morals and producing tragedies such as the recent
school shootings near San Diego.

In public schools, combatants have clashed over classroom curricula and
school library selections, often over the issue of whether advocates of intelligent
design earnestly separate science from theology. In Burlington, a small community
nestled among salmon-rich rivers and snow-dusted peaks, public opinion has
been vehemently divided over DeHart.

Authorities initially allowed DeHart to teach intelligent design during
one day of his two-week unit on evolution, but have now changed their minds.
Even though DeHart never overtly discussed religion in the class, Beth Vander
Veen, Burlington-Edison High School principal, said she has grown wary of
DeHart's real motivations.

"I don't think it's about showing holes in evolutionary theory anymore,"
she said. "I think it's about getting religion into the schools." Ken Atkins,
a parent, reached a similar conclusion. "He taught my kid religion for two
weeks, receiving public money in the schools, and didn't ask. I was outraged."

But Jerry Benson, a community leader who supports DeHart, said the science
teacher was only doing what educators should be doing: stimulating students
to think critically.

"The [intelligent-design] debate is exciting," Benson said. "I so want that
excitement to be presented to our students and cause them to stop and say:
'Well, what do I think?' "

For his part, DeHart insisted he has always stayed within the law by never
discussing the designer's identity or other theological questions. Despite
the school's recent ruling against him, he said he intends to keep looking
for ways to bring the ideas forward until the evidence ultimately proves him
right or wrong.

"Some things are worth fighting for," DeHart said, "and this is one of them."